Infographic: Animator Employment

J.K. Riki

April 7, 2014

Today we’ve got a quick and visual way to check out the latest data on Animation jobs in the US! (If you find some of the stats rather scary, don’t fret: It’s just an opportunity in disguise. Most of the rewarding things in life are indeed difficult, keep doing your best!)

9 comments

Great info graphic! Thank you, JK! It’s important to know these things. Especially in the US people keep being exploited just because they don’t compare their wages.
For freelancers 30 dollars per hour would be far too low (240 dollars a day… 175 euros… seriously?), but since 43 percent seem to have a steady job, the average seems okay.
As a rules of thumb everybody should calculate what they need to live (food, rent, insurance, cost for the car, some pension stuff) and never accept below that number (unless it’s a personal favor or you benefit from the profits and your work force is an investment). If everybody does that, the industry has to pay everybody fairly. And freelancers, don’t forget that you will have times between jobs… you need to charge more to not starve during that time!
You need that money to live, you can prove it and therefor confidently demand it. Never forget that the people who hire you get paid to talk you into a lower wage – it’s their job, it’s what they learned. It’s nothing personal or doubting your skills, it’s business. There is not an infinite amount of animators in the world and none with your exact style and skill set.

I guess that’s why I keep hearing people suggest that if you like anything else, you should do that as your main career. (Although I am not sure if it applies to me because my other “big” interest is screenwriting, which has that same oft quoted advice.)

Well then that works out beautifully, doesn’t it? Neither will get in the way of the other one if neither is a “main” anything!

What I take away from it is we’re probably not going to all be able to go the traditional route. And I think that’s okay, because it inspires creativity and new endeavors. If there was enough space for us ALL to be cogs in a machine, where would be the fun in that? Ha ha, but then, it’s never quite as simple as I’d love it to be… In the end, the people who balance surviving with thriving will probably never regret any of the hard work it took.